This invention relates to a crawler pipelayer and more particularly to the mounting apparatus for attaching the counterweight to the basic crawler vehicle.
Many pipelayers are mounted on crawler vehicle chassis and typically have a boom assembly mounted on one side of the vehicle and a counterweight assembly mounted on the opposite side. Such assembled pipelayers almost always exceed the allowable width and weight for shipment and thus the boom and counterweight assemblies must be removed for shipping and then reinstalled at the job site. This has become an increasing problem as the size of the pipelayers increase since the couterweight and boom assemblies may weigh several tons and are cumbersome to handle during both the removal and subsequent reinstallation operation. Another problem encountered with many pipelayers is that other components are necessarily mounted to the counterweight support structure. Thus removal of the support structure to achieve the minimum shipping width frequently necessitates disconnecting many hydraulic lines and linkages thereby increasing the time and complexity of preparing the vehicle for shipment and the subsequent reinstalling of the components.